


Without darkness there’s no use for light

by burnttoast_official



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Around Season 1, Confusion, F/M, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Relationship Issues, jim gordon catches feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29310342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnttoast_official/pseuds/burnttoast_official
Summary: "Jim knew he shouldn’t be working with such a shady man like Oswald, but the ever growing pile of unsolved cases laying on his desk and the rising tension between Falcone’s guys and the thugs operating under Maroni’s control were slowly getting out of hand. The violent confrontations, before being hidden behind rusty doors of abandoned warehouses in the darkest of night, were now getting more frequent and increasingly bolder, moving into the broad daylight of the busy streets of Gotham. The threat of innocent civilians getting hurt or even killed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time was increasing rapidly, forcing Jim to choose between his duty as a cop to protect all and every citizen of Gotham City and his moral consciousness. "When Jim Gordon gets sucked into his slightly unethical work-relationship with Oswald Cobblepot, he is confronted with a side of himself that has never before seen the light of day. It's dark, but it's there, and there's no denying it any longer.
Relationships: Jim Gordon/Barbara Kean, Oswald Cobblepot/Jim Gordon
Kudos: 9





	Without darkness there’s no use for light

“This is nice, just the two of us,” Barbara said while stretching her bare legs and placing them in Jim’s lap. Jim turned away to put his glass of whiskey on the little table next to the couch and softly caressed Barbara’s bare feet. “Thanks for making dinner tonight Jim.”  
“Yeah, of course.” Jim replied. He sounded distracted, staring into the orange flames lapping at the inside walls of the fireplace. He wasn’t exactly sure where his mind was drifting off to, but he couldn’t get himself to stay fully focused on the here and now with his fiancé in their apartment and her soft feet in his lap. It felt like he wasn’t really there, like he was drifting between places.  
“Hmm,” Barbara closed her eyes and softly rubbed her legs together. Jim gripped her feet and bend over to place a kiss on Barbara’s exposed collarbone peeking out over her strapless black dress. He had to stay focused. Get out of his own head, he kind of owed that to her after being absent for most of the past weeks, not just literally but also figuratively. He had to get a grip on himself.  
“You know, I missed being with you. Spending time together like this.” Jim mumbled against her skin, leaving small featherlight kisses all over her collarbones and kissing his way up to the curve of her neck. Barbara sighed in content and tilted her head to the side, giving Jim access to the rest of her pale neck. Jim’s hands slowly glided up her legs, trying to remember exactly how her skin felt after being away from it for so long. Not like he could ever forget, it’s like every inch of his fiancé was etched into his mind, like a detailed map of soft skin and slight dips and those beautiful curves he adored so much. A body he knew so well but at the same time felt so distanced from these last couple of weeks.

It was a busy time at the GCPD. New cases kept piling up on his desk and the old ones just kept laying there collecting dust. Loose ends with no new clues to tie them together and finish them up so they could be stored away in Ms. Kringle’s maze of file cabinets to never be thought about again. But lately it seemed impossible for any of those cases to ever get solved.  
And then there was also this simmering worry always nagging at the back of his mind about his sketchy informant. The lowlife presumably working for Fish Mooney called Oswald Cobblepot. He was an absolute rat of a man who would snitch anyone out for a couple of dollars and the illusion of some kind of status within Gotham’s circle of crooks and mobsters. But he was also the one providing Jim inside information he picked up at Maroni’s restaurant where Oswald disguised himself as a dishwasher, eavesdropping on the other men and women working in the kitchen and most importantly on Don Maroni and his dinner guests every chance he got.  
Jim knew he shouldn’t be working with such a shady man as Oswald, but the ever growing pile of unsolved cases and the rising tension between Falcone’s guys and the thugs operating under Maroni’s control were slowly getting out of hand. The violent confrontations, before being hidden behind rusty doors of abandoned warehouses in the darkest of night, were now getting more frequent and increasingly bolder, moving into the broad daylight of the busy streets of Gotham. The threat of innocent civilians getting hurt or even killed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time was increasing rapidly, forcing Jim to choose between his duty as a cop to protect all and every citizen of Gotham City and his moral consciousness. He was a cop working with one bad guy to catch all the other rotten men polluting the streets of his city. That’s what Jim kept telling himself, and it was true; the only reason he let himself near Oswald and his questionable work methods was to clean up Gotham. But still, the conflict within him kept him up at night, making a sick kind of nausea roiling in his stomach when he let himself think too much about the absurdity of it all.

He tried to snap himself out of it. He was having a nice night with his lover Barbara, the beautiful woman he loved so very dearly and who deserved so much more attention and loving than he was giving her these last couple of weeks. It wasn’t fair to her.  
Jim moved his hands, massaging Barbara’s feet and trying to keep his head from drifting away in endless worry, just focusing on the now.  
He wanted to feel close to her again. Wanted to remember why he fell in love with her all those years ago. With all of her, inside and out.  
Barbara moaned softly at the feeling of Jim’s hands sliding over her knees, slowly inching upwards towards her thighs and the warm open-mouthed kisses he kept placing all over her neck.  
“Oh Jim...” Barbara made a breathy sound when Jim slowly started sucking on a sensitive spot beneath her jaw. “Hmm,” he mumbled, getting lost in the warm feeling of Barbara’s skin and the way her body reacted to his every movement.

There was a sharp knock at the door. Barbara moaned, nudging Jim’s still clothed leg with her bare foot. “Don’t get that, please.”  
Jim lifted his head from her neck to look at his already slightly panting fiancé. Her cheeks dusted with a soft pink hue, her bottom lip slightly swollen, sparkling eyes full of lust and eagerness, all of her beautiful face framed by a few curly strands of silken blonde hair. She was beautiful, like a painting, Jim thought. Like one of the works displayed in her art gallery.

“I won’t. Rather be kissing you. ‘s been way too long I heard you make those beautiful noises.” Jim leaned forward and took her bottom lip between his teeth, tugging softly. There was another knock at the door. And another one. And another one.  
Jim closed his eyes for a moment before slowly sitting up, letting out an irritated sigh.  
“No, Jim,” Barbara said softly, reaching for his hand. The knocking continued in a steady rhythm.  
“Jesus!” Jim shot up from the couch, leaving a disappointed-looking Barbara behind. “What??” He nearly but yelled when he swung open the front door, getting ready to punch the person disrupting his evening with Barbara square in the face.  
Standing only a few feet away was a man dressed in a tuxedo, his jet black hair standing up in a messy faux hawk and a few greasy looking black strands twisted together plastered to his forehead like an upside-down crown. Jim took in a sharp breath.

“Who is it, Jim? Is it an emergency?” Barbara’s voice came from behind him, sounding far away as he tried to take in the visitor standing before him in his hallway. There was no way.  
“No,” Jim began, slightly looking back over his shoulder only to see a worried looking Barbara getting up from the couch. “It’s nothing honey, just… work.” He mumbled the last part. “Oh,” Barbara said, sounding a little disappointed. She tried to look past him into the hallway but Jim blocked her view by turning back around and stepping forward towards the man, closing the door a little more.  
The man had a crooked smirk on his face, his sharp pointy nose crinkling at the top from trying to contain his weird smile. “It’s…I’ll handle it,” Jim said while glancing back over his shoulder to his worried looking fiancé before quickly closing the door behind him.

He closed his eyes and took in a deep shuddery breath, silently counting to three in an attempt to stay grounded and also to make sure if this whole situation of the grinning man in the three-pieced suit being here in his hallway late at night was really happening right now.  
When Jim opened his eyes again and saw the man was still standing before him, which made this whole thing unfortunately very real and not some kind of bizarre dream, he wanted to punch the man even more.  
“What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. Here.” Jim growled, taking a step forward and making the man stumble backwards. The man laughed nervously, his face scrunching up in a twitchy manner. His eyes darting everywhere, avoiding Jim’s piercing glance.  
Another high-pitched laugh escaped the man’s throat when Jim continued looking straight at him, furious and ready to punch the man right back onto the streets of Gotham and as far away as possible from his apartment and his quiet and nice evening with Barbara. The man looked nervous, fidgeting and twitching like he was constantly being poked with short electric pulses.  
“Ha-h-hi Jim,” he stuttered out, raising his right hand in an awkward greeting before quickly putting it down again when Jim took another step forward, forcing the man to back up against the wall. His tuxedo jacket was crumpled and wet, Jim noticed, and his hair glistened with water droplets, making the featherlike strands appear even darker. He looked almost manic; panting slightly with his mouth forced into a crooked sideways smile that creeped Jim the fuck out, but he could not let the man in front of him know what kind of effect he and his whole twitchy, nervous presence had on him.  
“I asked you a question!” Jim tried not to shout but his anger mixed with the uneasy feeling roiling in his stomach made it difficult to keep quiet. Especially when the unexpected visitor started laughing his nervous laugh again, the sound echoing throughout the cold empty hallway.  
“Oswald! Answer me! What the hell are you doing here?”  
“I have something for you, Jim. I bet it’s going to make you very happy,” Oswald smirked and blinked his eyes a couple of times. Jim wasn’t sure if the action was supposed to imply some fake innocence or if it was just part of Oswald’s twitchy nature, but the uneasy feeling in his stomach doubled in size, making him want to puke.  
“Where did you get my address?”  
“Well well, now wouldn’t you like to know. I thought we were discussing me bringing you a gift, a selfless action on my part. But with this kind of hostile attitude.. I don’t know Jim…” Before Oswald could even finish his sentence Jim was gripping him by the throat, roughly pushing him against the wall. “Selfless my ass. You’re a crook, a rat. As if you’d come to me if you couldn’t gain anything out of this. Now tell me,” Jim tightened his grip on Oswald’s neck a bit more, squeezing his thumb deeper into the pale flesh. “Why are you here? Who gave you my home address? Huh?!”  
“Hm, so forceful. Even when you’re not on the job you get all police-y bad-cop on me. I like it,” Oswald squeaked out, winking at the end in an attempt to get some kind of rise out of the furious but also clearly flustered cop gripping him by the throat.  
Oswald could see it in his eyes, in the way they nervously darted over his facial features, searching for god knows what. Jim wasn’t very good in disguising his fear, despite putting on this whole tough guy façade, and that made something in Oswald stir, sending a pleasant shockwave down his spine.  
“Listen, you’re a well-known cop, of course your address is not hard to come by. Especially not if you know the right people.” Jim squeezed his throat even harder, staring into those sharp icy-blue eyes who gave no sign of Oswald even being remotely threatened, before abruptly letting go and stepping backwards. Oswald rubbed his reddened throat, his suit crumpled up and his tie bunching up at the collar of his shirt, almost falling out of his buttoned up black vest.  
“Look, if this is not convenient time I’ll come back tomorrow. Sometime around noon? Barbara is working early so I’ve heard. Something to do with a very important visitor at her gallery, no?”  
“What? What are you talking about, how do you know?”  
“Well, I may be a _rat_ , Jim, but this rodent has an excellent sense of hearing.” He pointed a finger at Jim, wagging it in a mocking gesture. “You know, cats talk, and rats listen. I’ll come by tomorrow. To present to you.. my gift.” Oswald smiled an unsettling wide smile, baring his pointy teeth.  
Then he turned around and started hobbling away in the direction of the staircase. The shoe of his bad leg making short squeaking sounds against the marble floor with every step.  
Jim looked at Oswald limping away, his own breathing trembling in his chest, burning in his lungs. He definitely felt like he was going to puke now.

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of who knows how many? But it's going to be at least a couple of chapters long.


End file.
